Design and management of transport networks. New approaches and experiments from a European And American perspective: An introduction

Abstract

To tackle ongoing transport problems--both at the urban and inter-urban level--such as sudden traffic growth, congestion, lack of capacity, pollution, road accidents, etc., a great deal of attention has recently been paid to new issues emerging in transport systems analysis. These concern complex networks, dynamic (in)stability, and especially sustainability. As a consequence, innovative models/methodologies have been geared to creating new tools and technologies able to come with these spatio-temporal transport changes (from both the demand and the supply side). This special issue on new approaches/experiments--oriented towards the design and management of transport networks--has therefore, as its first aim, to offer some reflections on these new methodological challenges and achievements, by trying to answer some actual and fundamental research questions, like those concerning the modeling of traffic (forecasts) in a network of n dimensions, where n is a large number; the real-time design of network flow dynamics; the prediction of traffic congestion/pollution; the route-choice behavior in the presence of uncertainty in the travel costs, etc.